03-22-2007, 03:36 AM
Is there any truth to this? Of course I don't expect any unbiased answers from our RE friends.
http://www.freakonomics.com/ch2.php
quote:
A big part of a real-estate agent's job, it would seem, is to persuade the homeowner to sell for less than he would like while at the same time letting potential buyers know that a house can be bought for less than its listing price. To be sure, there are more subtle means of doing so than coming right out and telling the buyer to bid low. The study of real-estate agents cited earlier also includes data that reveals how agents convey information through the for-sale ads they write. A phrase like "well maintained," for instance, is as full of meaning to an agent as the code phrase "Mr. Ayak" was to a member of the Ku Klux Klan; it means that a house is old but not quite falling down. A savvy buyer will know this (or find out for himself once he sees the house), but to the sixty-five-year-old retiree who is selling his house, "well maintained" might sound like a compliment, which is just what the agent intends.
An analysis of the language used in real-estate ads shows that certain words are powerfully correlated with the final sale price of a house. This doesn't necessarily mean that labeling a house "well maintained" causes it to sell for less than an equivalent house. It does, however, indicate that when a real-estate agent labels a house "well maintained," she is subtly encouraging a buyer to bid low.
Listed below are ten terms commonly used in real-estate ads. Five of them have a strong positive correlation to the ultimate sales price, and five have a strong negative correlation. Guess which are which.
Ten Common Real-Estate Ad Terms
Fantastic
Granite
Spacious
State-of-the-Art
!
Corian
Charming
Maple
Great Neighborhood
Gourmet
A "fantastic" house is surely fantastic enough to warrant a high price, isn't? What about a "charming" and "spacious" house in a "great neighborhood!"? No, no, no, and no. Here's the breakdown:
Five Terms Correlated to a Higher Sales Price
Granite
State-of-the-Art
Corian
Maple
Gourmet
Five Terms Correlated to a Lower Sales Price
Fantastic
Spacious
!
Charming
Great Neighborhood
Three of the five terms correlated with a higher sales price are physical descriptions of the house itself: granite, Corian, and maple. As information goes, such terms are specific and straightforward-and therefore pretty useful. If you like granite, you might like the house; but even if you don't, "granite" certainly doesn't connote a fixer-upper. Nor does "gourmet" or "state-of-the-art," both of which seem to tell a buyer that a house is, on some level, truly fantastic.
"Fantastic," meanwhile, is a dangerously ambiguous adjective, as is "charming." Both these words seem to be real-estate agent code for a house that doesn't have many specific attributes worth describing. "Spacious" homes, meanwhile, are often decrepit or impractical. "Great neighborhood" signals a buyer that, well, this house isn't very nice but others nearby may be. And an exclamation point in a realestate ad is bad news for sure, a bid to paper over real shortcomings with false enthusiasm.
If you study the words in the ad for a real-estate agent's own home, meanwhile, you see that she indeed emphasizes descriptive terms (especially "new," "granite," "maple," and "move-in condition"and avoids empty adjectives (including "wonderful," "immaculate," and the telltale "!"
http://www.freakonomics.com/ch2.php